1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for charging an internal battery in a wireless sensor network, and more particularly to an apparatus and method for charging an internal battery over a wireless channel between wireless sensor nodes.
2. Discussion of Related Art
In general, wireless sensor networks used in a wide range of application fields such as event/target sensing, monitoring, and tracking. In these application fields, numerous sensor nodes are densely disposed, and thus wireless sensor networks need to be intentionally designed. In other words, the management area of each sensor node should be guaranteed by ad-hoc networking.
In particular, a ubiquitous sensor network (USN) denotes a network system that organizes a wireless sensor network using sensor nodes having a sensor capable of obtaining recognition information about an object or environmental information about surroundings, and processes and manages information input through the various sensor nodes in real time in communication with the outside over the network.
In general, sensor nodes constituting such a sensor network are disposed at locations where it is impossible to receive operating power from the outside. Thus, in most cases, the sensor nodes can no longer be used when their battery life ends after the sensor nodes have been in a network, or are used in a self-charging method such as solar cell and vibration.
For these reasons, it is necessary to supply power to sensor nodes constituting a sensor network from the outside while minimizing their power consumption.